Death for a Good Deed. The Story of Aleksander Sosnowski

Aleksander Sosnowski was born in 1880 in Budzanów near Tarnopol. He came from a family of the landed gentry. After the death of his mother, Klementyna née Lubieniecka, he grew up in the family of his uncle in the village of Ladzkie Szlacheckie, situated in the vicinity of Stanisławów.

Aleksander and his wife Eugenia (née Hiwel) worked as teachers in Zawadka (Kałusz county), a small village inhabited mostly by Ukrainian population. The couple had 4 daughters: Jadwiga, Mieczysława, Maria and Antonina. During World War II, Aleksander Sosnowski performed the function of the head teacher in a common school in Zawadka. There were two Jewish teachers working in that school: Ucia Fuks, daughter of the local innkeeper Fiszel Fuks, and her cousin, Cunia Fuchs.

After the Third Reich’s invasion of the USSR and marching of the German army into the territory of the Małopolska province, it was Ucia and her cousin Cunia that arrived one night at the school in Zawadka. The women were looking for shelter. The Sosnowski family decided to help them by hiding them in the hay in the attic.

At that time, several groups of Ukrainian partisans became quite active in the neighborhood of the Sosnowskis’ house. Aleksander Sosnowski received a message about the incoming danger and a planned attack on his house – the asylum for two hiding Jewish fugitives. Still, he could not accept the fact that his life might be in danger. He believed that his status of a local teacher would somehow protect him from the assault: after all, many soldiers belonging to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) were his students. He decided to "stand guard" at his home with his youngest daughter, 17-year-old Tosia (Antonina), since in 1943 his wife, together with Mieczysława and Maria, had gone to visit Jadwiga, the oldest daughter, to help her take care of her little children (in those days Jadwiga lived and worked in Iwonicz-Zdrój near Krosno).

Unfortunately, as it turned out, nothing could stop the Ukrainian partisans. In the night of 23 and 24 February 1944, they burst into the house of the Sosnowskis and murdered everybody who was hiding there: Aleksander, Tosia and, of course, the two Jewish women: Cunia and Ucia. To this day the whereabouts of the victims’ bodies remain unknown.

The text has been written on the basis of the note by Władysław Wojtynkiewicz, son-in-law of Aleksander Sosnowski, and the account of Jan Gromek, grandson of the Righteous.